"Where I come from, when you stop dreaming, you die." Twelve-year old Aimé, nicknamed Machine Gun, is a mischievous kid from a housing project outside Paris, where families live alongside criminals and mothers try to keep their kids out of trouble. The hood isn't an easy place to grow up, but Machine Gun wouldn't trade it for any other! And right now, like all acne-riddled boys his age, his obsession is girls! In fact, he has a major crush on Oceane, the prettiest girl in his class, and would do just about anything to seduce her. In the building across the way lives Mohawk, his best friend, a crafty kid he's known since kindergarten, with whom he likes commentating police operations from the comfort of their windows. There's also Machine Gun's cousin, Isma, a funny and proud kid who spends his days on rooftops, being a lookout for local drug dealers, trying to be like Tony Montana. And his brother Djibril, 22, the family's pride and joy, a brilliant law student who dreams of the good life and has a troubled relationship with his girlfriend Lola, a white upper-middle class girl. But the day Isma tries to set up a coke deal between his bosses and a rival gang, all their lives suddenly spin out of control...